


it goes dark

by kiden



Series: music from the motion picture "it" [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Drinking, Drugs, General Unease, M/M, Pre-IT Chapter Two (2019), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-19 02:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22837246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiden/pseuds/kiden
Summary: "Sometimes it’s after finishing off a bottle of whiskey, usually the cheap kind that burns just as much going down as coming back up. It’s three, or four, or five in the morning, after a show, when Richie can still feel the heat of the stage lights and his nerves haven’t settled down and there is something tugging at him from the inside."prompt: things you said on the phone at 4 am
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: music from the motion picture "it" [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1641745
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	it goes dark

**Author's Note:**

> how do you get sea legs

Sometimes it’s after finishing off a bottle of whiskey, usually the cheap kind that burns just as much going down as coming back up. It’s three, or four, or five in the morning, after a show, when Richie can still feel the heat of the stage lights and his nerves haven’t settled down and there is something tugging at him from the inside. He calls from his cell, from a hotel landline, crawling over the bar and batting away the tender to get at the ancient, sticky phone tucked between the register and extra napkins. He punches-in the digits, watching his fingers like they aren’t his, and he never remembers the number afterwards. If it’s on his cell phone, he deletes the call log, outside himself as if he’s watching a reinactment of a murder scene clean-up on a true crime documentary. 

Nobody ever answers. The call never even connects. No robot voice ever tells him it’s not in service, or that the mailbox is full, or  _ anything.  _ There’s always silence, quieter than a dead line. The kind of silence that feels deep, and if he leans into it, loses his balance, he could fall in. It’s not dark or empty, it’s nothing. It’s a void. 

And afterwards is when he pukes. 

Richie has puked behind comedy clubs, in stranger’s bathtubs, in a garbage can backstage at Saturday Night Live. He’s hit his head so hard on his own toilet bowl, over and over again, his body throwing itself forward under the force of his sick, he’s bruised his forehead. His stomach empties until there’s nothing left to give up, and it’s just acid and yellow liquid and he feels like he’s going to die. And then he pukes some more. 

He’s had friends, even a girlfriend, once, all of them terrified to see it. The way his face apparently goes slack and his eyes widen and stare like he’s looking at something horrible, unspeakably grotesque, just off to the side where nobody else can see. They’d say,  _ you didn’t look like you anymore.  _ They’d tell him it was like something else slipped into his body, something angry and sad and hungry and lost. And then, the puking. And then he’d be himself again. 

None of them could ever remember the numbers either. Ten little black spots in their memory. Like someone cut the symbols out with a pair of scissors. 

The call doesn’t connect tonight either. Richie knows there’s nothing for it to connect to. He rolls onto his side, already feeling the gurgling in his gut, the whiskey and shots of tequila, mixing with an absurd amount of nachos, con quesa, and his head is pounding, his movements slow from the weed, throat dry and itchy. He presses the hotel phone to his face, gets his mouth right against it until he can feel the pin-point holes on his lips. This time, for whatever reason - alone, fucked-up, that vomit-taste already bubbling up into the back of his mouth - Richie knows what he wants to say. 

He knows the first three numbers tonight. Recognizes them the way he just knows things like what planet Superman is from and what The Catcher in the Rye is about even though he’s never read it. The way you can know things without remembering how you learned them. And it feels like shame, like being thirteen and knowing all the lyrics to Head Over Heels by The fucking  _ Go-Go’s.  _

It feels like the scratchy material of a hammock against the back of his knees. Someone’s elbow knocking into his ribs. His glasses fogging.

It’s a Maine area code.

“Love you, Eddie,” he whispers. “I love you and miss you, you piece of shit. Where did we all go? I don’t know where we are.” 

The void is there. Something cut out of the universe with a pair of scissors. Someone is listening but it’s not who he’s talking to. Richie pukes, all over the phone and mattress and his t-shirt. And then he forgets, and falls asleep.


End file.
